Artificial Grass

Unless you’ve got a green thumb and a greens mower, it’s folly to install a practice putting green in your back yard. The types of turfgrasses best suited for putting surfaces—bents and ultra-dwarf Bermudas—require constant care, chemicals and nutrition. The solution is a synthetic putting green, with grass blades so fine they look and feel like real grass but without the daily maintenance. It’ll cost more to begin with, but you’ll have far more spare time for practice.

Price was not a major factor in selecting Southwest Greens. Most artificial turf companies charge about the same for installation and material. It was performance and durability that separated it from the rest. For an outdoor practice green that will accept pitch shots and putt realistically, we like Southwest’s polypropylene turf, containing round silica sand that has been worked into the fibers to provide a realistic look and a pure putting experience. Plus, the putting speed can be adjusted, sped up by removing some sand, slowed down by adding a bit. With routine grooming, Southwest’s synthetic turf should last for 10 years or longer without appreciable degradation because of weather.

We were impressed, too, that more than two dozen tour professionals used Southwest Greens for their personal practice-putting facility, including Justin Rose, Jim Furyk, Vijay Singh, Nick Faldo, Adam Scott and Annika Sorenstam. Jack Nicklaus likes the product so much, his architecture company offers custom designs exclusively for a Southwest Greens installation. For an indoor green, where sand infill is not desirable, Southwest’s tight-bladed nylon is the best option. You can’t adjust its speed, but you can select from a range of heights to install a desired green speed.

“Through my company, we have been in business with Southwest Greens designing custom putting greens for homes since 2004. Based on our success, we decided to create a general purpose turf, Golden Bear Turf, which we can use for putting greens, recreation areas, multi-purpose fields as well as a residential home. In fact, I decided to take the natural grass out of my back yard and install Golden Bear Turf, not only for my putting green, but also for a general recreation area and an ornamental lawn area for me and my family to enjoy.”

Today’s synthetic putting green offers a practice surface that’s a driver and 2-iron closer to reality than chipping off backyard St. Augustine or rolling balls across the den and into a tumbler. The size of a fake green is limited only by the amount of real green in the customer’s wallet, and configurations are as varied as clients’ imaginations. “Average size is about 750 square feet, but our biggest was around 4,000 square feet,” said Peter Gunn, whose Southwest Greens Houston (swghouston.com) also installs play areas but takes greatest pride in its new Nicklaus Design greens. Gunn recently completed Texas’ first Nicklaus Design practice green, only the fourth in the world, at the Houston home of junior golf standout Cory Whitsett.

The system Gunn has used since 2003 starts with an aggregate rock base capped with a layer of sand to create subtle contours similar to those of a grass green. He then adds a layer of pad and the actual turf. A dressing of silica sand is rolled into the turf fibers and measured carefully to produce the desired speed, which can be as slow as those at a public course after a storm or as quick as those on the PGA Tour. Cost for an SGH installation runs $18 to $27per square foot, depending on size and accessibility, and professional maintenance takes only a couple of hours once annually. Because no actual grass is grown, light and moisture do not limit location. One man whose back yard is small tucked a narrow putting green behind his garage. A customer who owns five rural acres, Gunn said, put greens in each corner of his property and a synthetic tee box in the middle — one hole on that “course” plays over the house. Clients often add sand traps and chipping areas, Gunn said, so that they can practice their short games. With 135 courses and a few dozen more driving ranges around Houston, there are plenty of places to roll golf balls. What there is not, for many of us, is free time to travel to and from those practice areas. Serious golfers are opting more frequently to bring the game into their own yards. Synthetic putting greens are not cheap, but with gas prices at $3-plus per gallon, they’re starting to make more economic sense.